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ABA TECHSHOW

Managing Email on iOS

By J. Benjamin Stevens & Katie Floyd

Mail in iOS 8 has a number of new features that attorneys will find particularly useful. these include the ability to customize email notifications by thread, enhanced drafting options, new swipe features to triage email, and the ability to interact with email notifications.

“Notify Me”

One enhancement is the ability to create specialty notifications by email thread. You can already designate certain contacts as “VIPs” and manage notifications accordingly. But, if you are handling an important matter and need to know immediately when a reply is made to an email you can designate specific email thread as important and receive instant notifications. This option is also available when writing a new email, just tap on the little bell icon that is located on the right- hand side of the subject line.

Drafts

Sometimes when composing messages on the iPhone you need to reference another message in your inbox or you want to save the message for a later date. Previously you had to choose between deleting or saving the message to a drafts folder. Now, iOS can remember your drafts messages and tuck them away for future use. If you have more than one draft saved message in progress, IOS will display them as a stack of cards.

To use this feature, compose a new email or respond to an existing one as normal. To save a message as a draft, swipe down from the top of the screen to return to your inbox. The draft will hover at the bottom of the screen until you’re ready to return to it. Tap the message to continue composing.

Swipe Gestures

Mail in iOS 8 includes a couple handy gestures that let you flag messages, set them as read, or delete them simply by swiping across the message.

If you don’t like the way the gestures are setup you can change them. Under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and selecting Swipe Options.

Interactive Notifications

iOS 8 introduced the idea of interactive notifications. If you have notifications turned on for email messages you can now directly interact with those messages without disrupting the rest of your work. Interactive notifications give you the option to not only see that you have a notification, but also by swiping down on the banner you are giving the option to mark it as read, or send it to the trash.

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